Musings from the Long Cold Sleep
by Dark Mirage1
Summary: Rewritten. Mason Eckhart reflects on his life whilst in stasis...we're who we are for good reasons...no daily Evil Pills required.


I've preferred the cold so long I couldn't imagine I could ever be.too cold. Only in a chilled environment made the nearly impermeable polymer skin tolerable. In stasis everything is numb and still, metabolism slowed to an imperceptible crawl. Almost, but not quite dead, I am safe from decay and bacterial assault.  
  
Only my thoughts race on, impatiently as ever. All I can do in the cold is think.  
  
I think about Marc a lot. We shared a room and did everything together. We were never alone because the other was always there. Mom even dressed us alike. Even she could not be certain who was Marcus and who was Mason.  
  
I think about that Sunday in August when Dad took us out in the middle of the lake, leaving us there while he headed back to shore, forcing one of his tests of endurance and will.  
  
He stood on the dock and watched us struggle.  
  
I swallowed green water, but I reached the muddy shore. Then I hauled myself up onto the rotting dock in time to hear Dad screaming at Marc that he wasn't trying hard enough. Marc kept flailing. He was never as strong as I was, and Dad cursed at him as if abuse would make Marc stronger.  
  
Marc was in trouble and still a long way from the dock. I expected Dad to do something, but he never made a move to take the boat out to save Marc. Isn't that what fathers are supposed to do? He just didn't believe Marc would fail to meet his expectations. Neither of us dared disappoint him, with the implied threat of unnamed punishment looming dark and large in our fears.  
  
I watched Marc go under and not come back up. For minutes, he stood there, silent, staring at the empty water. I wanted to scream at him to go save Marc, but he would not have listened. When his mind was set, there was no changing him. I was uncertain whether he was stunned into inaction, or annoyed with Marc for failing him. I am still not sure.  
  
Even at eight years, I knew better than to cry in front of Dad.  
  
Monday morning Dad went back to the hospital like any other Monday, and left Mom to deal with the messy details of the search for the body, and the funeral arrangements.  
  
Mom was always afraid to say much in front of him. In between phone calls she sat me down at the kitchen table and told me to tell exactly what had happened. She believed me. That was the last time I remember crying, mourning for the loss of my twin, my other.  
  
From that time, they hardly spoke to each other or to me. To escape the tension, I spent evenings in my room, which still held Marc's things.  
  
One day in sixth grade the school let out early when the furnace broke down. Dad usually was home before me, but that day I was first through the door. Mom wasn't in the kitchen or the library. I found her in their bedroom, still and cold, with an empty bottle of pills by the bed.  
  
By her silence, she had left me some time before. The hope of her return was permanently gone, and with it, the hope that I would belong to a family.  
  
I had never seen anyone -or anything-dead before. I ran to my room, and locked the door behind me. For five minutes. I could not stay in the house alone, not with what was left of Mom down the hall, and I did not want to be alone with Dad when he came home.  
  
I called the police. The house quickly filled with police and EMTs, strangers who were more concerned about me than my Dad was when he came home to this chaos.  
  
Chaos he could not control. Not only was he not in charge of his own house, but he was expected to answer questions posed by strangers. There was something peculiar about the way Mom had died, and the way she looked. I listened carefully, but did not understand the whole of it.  
  
For the first time, I saw that Dad could be cowed and managed, much as he had manipulated us.  
  
The strangers in uniforms finally left, taking Mom's body with them, and I was alone with Dad.  
  
"Why did you call the police? Why didn't you call me?"  
  
I lied. "You told me never to call you at the hospital."  
  
Marc was murdered by neglect, or stupidity, or ego, but Mom abandoned me to Dad. She was weak. No mother should be that weak. There must have been a cousin somewhere who would have taken us in. Did Mom love the new cars and the nice house so much she could not give them up? Did she fear what Dad might do if we left? Or did she lack the will to do anything?  
  
I was angry at Dad for killing Marc, and angry with Mom for leaving me, still too young to properly protect myself. The fate of the weak was obvious, and I resolved never to be weak.  
  
Dr Eckhart's son had to be the best in everything. With Marc gone as his backup hope, and Mom no longer there to bully, all Dad had was me.  
  
When report cards came out and I got a B in Algebra for Gifted Students, I knew I was in trouble.  
  
"It's a mistake," I told him.  
  
He glared at me, disbelief obvious.  
  
He took me to his hospital.and locked me in a ward all weekend. Dad worked with dangerous mental patients. I always knew that. He had not adopted the spreading practice of keeping patients sedated or otherwise medicated to manageable states.  
  
For sixty or more hours I stayed awake, surrounded by unkempt, unwashed, drooling human shells. Whenever one came too close, I stared them down, showing my teeth, convincing them I was dangerous, and not to be provoked to attack.  
  
Wire mesh was on all the windows. Even if I got out to a phone, who could I call?  
  
Marc was gone and Mom was gone. I was on my own, and knew I always would be, living by my wits and strength.  
  
When Dad showed up Monday morning, he must have expected me to cry like a girl. I refused to give him satisfaction. I walked out past him to the car with as much dignity as an 11 year old can manage.  
  
I don't believe he expected that.  
  
He never said anything about the amended grade, changed to an A, even though I left the official notice on his desk a few days after. A month later, he shipped me off to military school. I buried myself in studies and a handful of sports. I didn't feel comfortable around the others. They talked about homes and families, and they went home at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  
  
Dad never wrote and never called, although tuition and board checks were always mailed on time.  
  
I was angry. I had been angry a good many years. I hid it well-I learned to hide everything well, but one of the perceptive school counselors asked once asked me, "Mason, what do you do with all of your anger?" I didn't have a good answer. Anger was so much a part of me imagining life without it was impossible.  
  
Later on, when I was at West Point, they told me Dad had had a stroke. The typical response would have been to fly home immediately, but I knew there was something else I had to do. I copied my paper about the desirability of confining mental defectives to institutions, and sent it to him by overnight express where he was hospitalized. At long last, the perfect weapon and target for my anger.  
  
I hadn't been at Genomex long when I married Jackie.  
  
Maybe I shouldn't have put in those eighty hour weeks. Could anything at the company have been that important? The projects promised so much in better lives for so many people. Perhaps I was caught up in the extraordinary dedication of most of the employees who were true believers in their science and craft.  
  
I only saw Jackie and Grey and Michelle and Deirdre in a blur, which briefly focused around holidays. I thought I was working hard for all of us.to protect what for me was an island of human warmth I had not known before. I thought I had everything my life lacked for so long; I believe I must have been happy in those days. I did my best to be the father my Dad never was to me. Jackie perceived my conduct as neglect; I had never been so involved with people since Marc was alive. Jackie never understood. She wasn't particularly bright. She was charming, and that charm blinded me to her shortfalls. Charm is overrated, and tedious.  
  
I came home at 10.30 a few days before Thanksgiving and found the house stripped of furniture, children, and wife. My island of warmth had slipped beneath the waters much in the manner of Marc. Whatever I believed I had was lost.  
  
Other people did it so easily, making and breaking friendships and relationships. Not me. Some losses one can only weather once. Some doors close that you never want to open again.  
  
I kept pictures of Grey, Michelle, and Deirdre secreted in my desk at Genomex, secure in an envelope so no one would casually glimpse them and know my vulnerabilities. By now, the photos are burnt or shredded. I would have liked to see my children again.once, from a distance, to see what they look like grown. I would not want them to see what I have become.  
  
What I have become.alive, but damaged and not whole. A fragile oddity. Thanks, Adam. Adam is not as smart as he thinks he is. He's not even as smart as other people think he is.  
  
He's careless. His carelessness damned me to sixteen years (and however long I have slept here) clinging to a faint imitation of living, inside a manufactured polymer skin. A well-placed paper cut would kill me. Antibiotics and soluble nutrients pickle every cell of me. I don't even remember what feeling well feels like. Sometimes I wonder how my thoughts must be affected by all the medications coursing through me. I closed down my emotions long ago, and willed myself not to feel pain. I've forgotten what it feels like to feel most things.except the cold of stasis.  
  
"Freak". The whispered insults reached me, have no doubt. Disputing the label of "freak" is difficult, existing in the twilight of being a little dead but still living.living by sheer will, freak or not.  
  
"Cruel". Even I wondered sometimes to what degree I became like my father.the last thing in the world I wanted to become.  
  
"Ruthless". Of course. Better them than me. I am the one with the vulnerabilities. Better to be feared than loved, yes?  
  
"Evil". The world isn't ready for mutants. Time and again, mutants prove they aren't ready for the world. The daughter of time.is truth. The truth of what I believe, and what I have done at no small cost to myself will be proved out. I have no doubts.  
  
But will I waken from the cold? 


End file.
